Law and Conscience Project

At the core of this project is one basic proposition: That the Chinese people remain dedicated to the value of human dignity, and thus to the rights of the individual before the state. Our reports, outreach efforts, and network-building among reform-minded professionals aim to affirm this cultural belief as the basis for a community of legal re&formers and rights advocates.

The goal of this project is to encourage the Chinese people to challenge the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian narrative of individual insignificance, particularly within the context of the all-too prevalent practice of thought reformation. This project will show the extent to which the Party’s repressive practices deviate starkly from the transcendent values and normative visions embodied in the ethical, religious, spiritual, and other discourses of pre-Communist Party culture, which are arguably China’s greatest contribution to world civilization. We will publish and disseminate one annual report China, on the role and operation of systematic “thought transformation” (sixiang gaizao), which includes the under-examined practice of mental and physical torture of dissidents to force them to give up their belief. These brutal practices are not currently the subject of any focused research project, nor are they currently part of the public discourse on the values that should guide Chinese legal reform.